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An then, there is The Smoking Gun. While they don't seem to publish random letters, they do publish embarassing letter or documents that have been sent to a governmental agency. So, perhaps he could publish the document recording the complaint the guy sent to the FBI. That would be even better.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/

Take a look at P.Diddy (or whatever the hell he calls himself), he's sold millions upon millions of CDs, and yet he was dropped by his label for spending more money than he was making. Lavish demands... I agree the RIAA is evil, but these artists aren't that much less evil themselves... Especially the POP/RAP superstars... they are insane when it comes to their spending habits...

Wanna see what artists are putting as riders in their contracts? This site has lots of scanned riders.

... and George W. Bush would just prefer I forget that he's a convicted drunk driver and traitor.

I can't give you doctored ones, but how about this lovely mugshot of him, after being arrested (yes, it seems to be true) in 1977.

Writing open source software?

I didn't see your posting when I made mine along the same subject. I agree with what you have to say.

One only has to look the activities of W's cohorts, and where they get their $$$, to see the further damage that is being dealt in deregulation of these things, and handing control to lying, greedy companies like Enron.

Check out OpenSecrets.org to see who is getting money from where. Then check their voting record and see if they voting to represent the people or to represent their own greed.

Some people believe that George W. could have known about the corrupt dealings of Ken Lay and Enron? Perhaps they should read their correspondence with each other while Bush was governor of Texas on TheSmokingGun.com

I would highly recommend Michael Moore's new book, "Stupid White Men". He has done his research well on Bush and his cadre.

what the hell is this apple bullcrap? You have to be kidding me. If they want a page that panders to their readers, why not pedophile.slashbot.org?

RMS in jailhere

see him here

Bombing is the most peaceful solution?

Only in America, as Dubya would say.

...our government, and its wholly-owned subsidiary (NATO), are demanding even more privacy. We are about to attack Afghanistan based on secret evidence. Read any quote by Colon Powell or any other talking head from the last few days: plenty of "strong belief", "extremely likely", "probably", etc... If Osama ibn Laden is indeed guilty of the attacks and the Taliban was indeed fully aware and complicit, then what will our government risk by full disclosure of all evidence? It's not like we are going to bring him here and give him a free trial.

No one should believe a word Bush says, considering that he has lied about when he quit drinking, lied about his favorite book, and told numerous other lies--all that just to get elected. His inheritance will continue to grow as long as there is plenty of cheap oil to keep Americans' SUVs full of cheap gas.

Most Afghanis are extremely poor and have no idea what the hell this United States of America is. Shall their introduction be a bombing campaign?

You've been fooled. You watched the hand the magician was waving. Have you ever the Arab press?

Please read more


Bzzzt !

Again, read the "terrorist" manual from Bin Laden's own org (which is who I was talking about).

You can make up whatever views you want, but you should read what the "enemy" writes to understand him/her.

[thesmokinggun.com]Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants

The main mission for which the Military Organization is responsible is :

The overthrow of the godless regimes and their replacement with an Islamic regime.

Please read more, indeed !

New Mexico is also where Bill Gates got arrested way back when.

He must have pictures of some powerful politician and a goat, donkey, etc...

That's a gutsy statement from a slashdot reader, that probably realizes that corporations can lobby for laws like the DMCA, and then prosecute people, and prompt raids to confiscate and arrest people who have DVD's that are region-coded for another country. Then there's the poison water and dead ecosystems from oil spills, the Nike sweatshops, the Gap sweatshops, the genetically altered food that isn't labelled because genetics isn't an exact science and corporations afraid that if people knew what was genetically 'enhanced' their profits would suffer. Did I mention that the corporations that make genetically altered foods are in this business because their previous business of making chemical weapons dried up? Then there's corporate welfare. Examples of this include billionaire Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's successful effort to build a $300 million dollar stadium for his billionaire Seattle Seahawks, and have taxpayers foot the bill. Corporate Welfare costs the country at least $150 billion a year, and it goes to companies like GM, IBM, AT&T, GE, and Motorola, to name a few. Drug companies and HMO's lobby on a daily basis to increase profit at the expense of human lives. They profit fine in Canada, despite being required to actually make life saving medicine affordable. You might've heard about elderly people taking buses there to get pills. Tobacco companies planned advertising campaigns to specifically target 11-18 year olds, and when the research on the results came out, when the lawsuits started flying, they bought off congress to bring the backlash to an end.

To say that any of this is the product of a free country and a government not empowered to take away rights is naive. The founders never meant for corporations to have rights. WHY SHOULD THEY? Why should an entity comprised of people who ALL have rights that are absolute have rights of it's own!? It's NOT EVEN A PERSON. And in fact the founders understood that business HAD to be regulated in order to preserve democracy for everyone, from a farmer to a CEO. But greed won out, and now we get all our news and information from corporate elitists. And people have a distorted view of democracy; believing that profiteers somehow have their best interests in mind, 'surely they're not driven by PROFIT and profit alone! Damn that evil government for picking on a poor multinational corporation!' And with attitudes like that none of it will change until corporations ARE the government.

Think of it this way; we all hate an oppressive government. This is America. Echelon, Carnivore, they both deserve to be brought to an end. The thing is, if you have a beef with the government in a democracy, you can run for office and change the government. At least you used to be able to. But ask any politician of any party what it takes to win an election, and they will tell you that these days, the guy with the most money wins. And where does that money come from? Corporations.

There are lots of multi-billion dollar "non-profit" companies out there. I used to work for one. The way the game is played is this: If you have a surprisingly successful quarter, you pay out huge "bonuses" to your executive staff. That way, they come out just as well as if they were shareholding execs in a for-profit venture.

It's really just a difference of semantics.

Even setting that aside, your theory has one small problem...

If you are a human being, you are biased.

There is no such thing as purely objective journalism. Even those who try be "just the facts" reporters will allow their bias to bleed into their selection of stories, their choices of emphasis, and the "experts" they choose to interview.

As one example, Jim Lehrer of PBS's "News Hour" tries his darndest to be fair and objective, yet vast majority of Republicans who are invited to appear as talking heads on his show are liberal republicans like David Gergan. You are not likely to ever see the likes of Jack Kemp on his show. Mr. Lehrer does not have a similar aversion to the far left, so debates on his show are usually held between a liberal Democrat and a liberal Republican (which results in a very civil debate... lots of consensus of opinion is usually found between them.)

That's why, when I want to read or watch news analysis, I always turn to the extremists on both sides. Why? Because they are up front about their bias. On the Internet, The Smoking Gun makes no secret of being a JonKatzian-style anti-corporate leftist site, while The Drudge Report is published by an unapologetic Republican cheerleader.

The panel of the quirky-yet-entertaining PBS show "Mental Engineering" probably don't really think of themselves as lefties, but do such a poor job of hiding their bias that they might as well have a running caption that says "we hate capitalist marketing". And on the same network we have William F. Buckley's "Firing Line". Nobody ever accused Mr. Buckley of pretending to be unbiased.

When you consume media that is open about their bias, it invites critical thinking, which is a Good Thing. In our local radio market, there is a conservative blowhard named Jason Lewis who dominates the late afternoon drive. I find that about half the time, I disagree with either his position, or the argument he uses to support a position I would otherwise agree with, but I appreciate that he comes right out of the blocks proclaiming his bias. I wish more journalists would do the same.

I'm a college student and I've never worked in an office environment, so that might be why :D

But I do see a lot of scanned memos from tobacco companies and such, so I had assumed most companies continued to do it the old fashioned way. Sometimes email seems a lot less secure than an office with a shredder.

Another interesting document which has been mentioned elsewhere: the text of a speech which was prepared for President Nixon (by William Safire, no less) in case there was some sort of disaster that marooned Armstrong and Aldrin on the lunar surface, complete with additional instructions about the protocol to be followed. Though the speech was (thankfully) never needed, it remains an interesting footnote to what will probably be remembered as NASA's most successful series of missions.

Eric
--

Looks like Slashdot beat the thesmokinggun.com to the scoop!

Music Freedom outlined the top earners for the year:

1. NSync - 184m
2. Dr. Dre, Eminem - 172m
3. Britney Spears - 139m
4. Tim McGraw, Faith Hill - 112m
5. Backstreet Boys - 102m
6. Santana - 99m
7. Creed - 108m
8. Dixie Chicks - 87m
9. Tina Turner - 64m
10. Christina Aguilera - 65m
11. Dave Matthews Band - 64.2m
12. Sting - 48.1m
13. KISS - 47m
14. Red Hot Chili Peppers - 52m
15. Ricky Martin - 48m

But we do need to remember that these artists only make up 0.1% of all the artists out there.

Matt

Now, for the first time in the history of the planet Earth, there are no wars whatsoever between nation states anywhere. There is a direct relationship between the number of nuclear bombs in our posession, and the amount of violence our civilisation suffers from.

Ahem. Major unsubstantiable statements. I do agree that the sheer quantity of nuclear weapons owned by the U.S. and C.I.S. are a deterrent, if that is what you are really trying to say. However, this isn't the first time in history. You see, one is never "there", but one is always "going" there. Our relative peace is but a phase between times of war. In just six days, we will have a draft-dodging, crooked, alcoholic, warmonger in the White House. War is in our near future.

As far as your assertion of a negative relationship between quantity of nuclear weapons and the level of violence, that is obvious bosh. Please stop trolling slashdot. Thank you.

Having looked at al lthe drawings up on http://www.thesmokinggun.com and reading everyone's description who's seen it, the novel thing about this has to be a gyroscope based stabilization system for a variety of scooters...The drawings of the "scooters" looks very unstable, and his application mentions a devide which is unstable when not powered... As for "Ginger", I think he may be referring to Ginger Rodgers (as in with Fred Aistaire)...Maybe this thing just glides around like her smooth dancing?? The only thing still nagging me was Bob "ethernet" Metcalfe's quote : "Now, if I invented metal, and came out with the first spoon, which would be the big invention, the spoon or metal? This is the current complication in solving the IT mystery".....very odd, hints at a whole new technology... Fascinating!

I'm well aware of them. Perhaps you should check the dates on those cases and realize that's all ancient history in this dawn of neo-feudalism. Let's see how soon the antitrust laws go away.

The largest corporations make the laws and select their puppet politicians, at least here in America.


I'd rather be a unix freak than a freaky eunuch

Eric
--

Who in their right mind uses "Ain't It Cool" news as a primary source? Shouldn't the title of the site and the lack of writing skills on the boards be a dead giveaway that it's mostly bogus?

Let's put it this way - rumor-mongers though they might be, at least TheSmokingGun has verifiable documentation of all the stuff they claim, unlike the 'news' at 'Ain't It Cool'. At least that makes it smell a little more like journalism.

Always, always verify your sources, and don't always believe what's on the Web... I had thought Slashdot was a little better about picking-and-choosing source material, even on slow news days. Tsk, tsk, tsk!

Best regards,
LConover

"Hope clouds observation." (Frank Herbert, Dune.)

Over at the Smoking Gun (you know, the guys who posted the restraining order against newly-married multimillionaire Rick Rockwell) they have a copy of his mugshot, as well as a copy of an accident report where they also mention that the mugshot was the result of some traffic violation.

-mike kania

The Smoking Gun obtains public documents like celebrity arrest records, autopsy reports, etc. and puts them up on the Web. They have posted a copy of Andy Kaufman's death certificate here.

The Smoking Gun obtains public documents like celebrity arrest records, autopsy reports, etc. and puts them up on the Web. They have posted a copy of Andy Kaufman's death certificate here.

Oh, I think Gates might have had a run in with the law here or there..